


a certain step towards falling in love

by imalwaysstraight



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Joseph Kavinsky appears briefly as a Bingley sister, M/M, Orla Figures Prominently, Slow Burn, TRC Big Bang, You definitely don't need to have read Austen to read it, pride and prejudice au, yeah i did that, you just need to enjoy people flirting via argument and pretending not to like each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imalwaysstraight/pseuds/imalwaysstraight
Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teenage boy in possession of too much money must be in want of a beautiful car.And so they all seemed to be: every Raven Boy had his Bugatti, his Rolls, his deeply-upgraded Hummer. Adam Parrish slid his eyes across them coolly in the Aglionby parking lot, careful not to pay them any undue attention, careful not to care. Adam ignored their honking as he biked to his factory job in the afternoon. Adam fixed them up at Boyd’s with pristine emotional detachment.Until one Thursday in Adam’s junior year.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 48
Kudos: 114





	1. Universally acknowledged

**Author's Note:**

> A TRC Pride and Prejudice AU. (Like it says in the tags, you don't need to have read Austen to read it.) Warning for canon-typical swearing and descriptions of past violence. 
> 
> Many kudos for the excellent quick-turnaround beta-ing to the lovely @hollyanneg, and to the v talented @thematicallycoherent (on tumblr) for the [BEAUTIFUL fanart (I mean really pls go look at it!!!)](https://thematicallycoherent.tumblr.com/post/622665952614629376/i-can-finally-post-my-pieces-for-the)
> 
> Thank you both!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teenage boy in possession of too much money must be in want of a beautiful car. 

And so they all seemed to be: every Raven Boy had his Bugatti, his Rolls, his deeply-upgraded Hummer. Adam Parrish slid his eyes across them coolly in the Aglionby parking lot, careful not to pay them any undue attention, careful not to care. Adam ignored their honking as he biked to his factory job in the afternoon. Adam fixed them up at Boyd’s with pristine emotional detachment. 

Until one Thursday in Adam’s junior year, the last week of winter break, when he was working under a particularly troublesome Maserati and he heard his boss ask a question.

“And you’re an Aglionby boy, is that right?” Boyd had a clever way of hiding edge in innocuous sentences. Adam appreciated the talent best when it was used on other people. 

“You guessed it,” answered a young man’s voice, dripping in Southern old money. He had just driven his noisy car into the other bay in the garage, though Adam couldn’t see: he was on the opposite side of the Maserati. “Just starting this semester. Lovely to be here. Lovely little town.”

“Ain’t it? We’ll have her fixed up for you by 8 tomorrow morning.”

“Splendid,” said the Raven Boy.

“Remind me of your name?”

“Gansey,” and a pause as Boyd waited for a surname. 

“Gansey what?”

Sheepishly, almost: “That’s all there is.”

When the boy was gone and Boyd back in his office, Adam slid out from under the Maserati and hazarded a glance at the car, intending apathy, as usual. He did a double-take, and found his breath caught in his chest. 

It was not a beautiful car. It was a hideously orange vintage Camaro. 

* * *

Adam slid into his usual chair in 300 Fox Way later that evening only to find that everyone was in a hubbub except for Blue Sargent, which was normal enough, but no one seemed willing to talk about it, which was downright martian. 

Blue had been trying to figure it out all afternoon, to no avail. Now, she ladled some oddly purple lentil soup into Adam’s bowl. 

“I really don’t know,” she said to Adam’s unspoken question. “My best guess is someone got their first period, but that’s usually a very well-decorated celebration.”

Adam tried and failed not to miss a beat. “I see.”

“There’s a pie Persephone always makes, and—“

“Attention, please,” said Maura Sargent, who was wearing indigo lipstick and at least three cardigans, and lightly banging an ice cream scoop against a mug full of wine. “I would like to draw our attention to the elephant in the room.” She took a purposeful sip. “The gentleman.”

Blue turned to Adam, but Orla made a _tut_ - _tut_ noise. So it was a non-Adam gentleman. “I thought we didn’t know any gentlemen besides Adam,” she piped up. 

“Speak for yourself,” said Orla. 

“We don’t,” Blue’s mother said, toying with the ice cream scoop, “but we will.” 

“For certain we will,” said Calla witchily, as she said all things. 

“Indeed we must,” said Persephone, who was sitting atop four phone books in an act of vast overcompensation. She was now, by far, the tallest person at the table. 

“Wait, we _want_ to meet a man? No offense, Adam.” 

“It’s less that we want to,” said Calla. “And more that we have to.”

Persephone teetered a little, though she seemed unconcerned. “He’s just arrived in town. And we have been unable to see anything else in the cards all day.”

“We did a three-way reading this afternoon to try to figure it out, and decided that he is very important, I think, to all of our lives,” said Maura. 

“To some of us more than others,” Persephone chirruped. 

“True love!” burst out Orla with glee, as if she had been struggling to contain herself. “She means true love. Get ready to kill, Blue.”

“ _Orla_ ,” said Jimi, with as much menace as Jimi could manage (not much, but the effort was noted).

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a second.” Blue had been told her whole life—by every nosy psychic or irritable medium who had ever been within a mile radius of 300 Fox Way—that if she kissed her true love, he would die. And, more importantly, she had not woken up that day anticipating—nor did she consent presently—to be loved truly or truly love.

“He’s just arrived in town,” Maura added quickly, “and Orla is jumping to a conclusion there. We don’t know anything about him—”

“—except his car,” Persephone interjected. “Any time we tried to do a reading today, all any of us could see was his car in strange places. Very strange indeed. Very strange car.”

“But the point is,” Maura continued, “Orla might be right, but she’s most likely not, and either way she would do well to not taunt. However, as Persephone mentioned, he is certainly somehow important. In a way that has to do with you. As his new neighbors, we think it best to meet him.”

“But the only lead we have is the damn car.” Calla set her jam jar of wine down and looked at Blue. “Any interesting men with terrible cars in your life lately?”

“No,” said Blue too quickly, then considered the question. “None.”

“We really should,” Persephone said. “Meet him.”

Adam cleared his throat. The buzz of the table stopped and turned towards him. “What was the car like?” 

“Orange,” said Persephone. 

“Camaro,” added Maura. 

“Ugly as shit,” sneered Calla.

Adam paled. Blue hoped it did not mean what it almost certainly meant. 

“You’re not gonna like this,” he said to her in a low voice, as if they were alone at the table. “His name is Gansey, and—”

The household all seemed to lean inward simultaneously. 

Adam didn’t continue. 

“And?” said Blue finally.

“And he’s a Raven Boy.”

* * *

“Apparently, there’s some—” Blue waved her hand about, to indicate the black box of Fox Way logic, “—cosmic stuff to do with the two of us. But—here’s what really _gets_ to me—no one will tell me what it is. I’m the only one who’s not psychic but no one cares to fill me in. All they say is, well, you know, accurate, but not specific, yadda yadda.”

“Yikes,” Adam said. They were at Nino’s for Blue’s shift that Friday afternoon, Adam sitting at the bar. It was his only day off, and his last break for a while, given that school would start back up come Monday. 

“Right? They won’t let up about it. It’s—just—well, you can’t really argue with psychics. Anyways. What’ll you have?” 

“That joke was only funny the first through third time.”

“Right, one coke, hold the soda, add water.”

“Wait,” Adam said, and he did the math in his head. He thought about how much overtime he was going to pull before rent was due next week. He thought about what he could eat for dinner the next five nights. He thought about the last time he’d had a coke. “I’ll actually have a coke.”

“It’s on the house,” Blue said, a little quieter. A recalcitrant piece of hair had come out of one of her many barrettes and it took all of Adam’s willpower not to tuck it back behind her ear. Two months ago, he could have done that, and she would have been charmed by it. If he did it today, she probably wouldn’t talk to him for the rest of her shift. 

“Then I’ll have a water.”

Blue gave him a smirk. “Marked-up coke it is.”

She turned away to pour it when the bell over the door jingled. Instinctually, Adam turned to look: there were a good number of people in Henrietta he didn’t want coming up behind him. 

But it was a boy Adam had never seen before. Handsome—Orla would have called him sexy, unironically, in a deep tone of voice just to shave a couple years off of Adam’s life—and clean cut, and so obviously wealthy it kind of hurt to look at him. It was like looking at the sun, if the sun had been raised mostly by a nanny and was guaranteed a state senate seat by age 30.

He sauntered right up to the bar, and sat down next to Adam. Immediately, he pulled out his phone, and answered a call. “Hello, Gansey speaking.”

Adam choked on his soda. He knew that voice, that name. Blue, unfortunately, was halfway across the restaurant on her way to a booth of pre-teens who were almost certainly not going to tip. 

“Ah, Malory! Is this a new number?” Adam caught Blue’s eye as she returned to the counter and tried to make an expression that communicated ‘you may or may not kill this man with your mouth.’ For some reason, she didn’t seem to understand. 

“Oh, really? Well, you know how these companies can be these days. Oh, _really_? Well, you must be. I say!”

Adam raised his eyebrows at Blue and then tipped his head towards the back hallway. She glared at him. He made wide eyes. She pushed an order pad and pen towards him. 

THAT IS GANSEY, Adam wrote as small as possible. Thankfully, Gansey paid him no mind, as he was fully engaged in whatever sort of conversation could prompt a teenage boy to say “I say!”

Blue’s eyes went wide. She mouthed back, “what do we do?”

“Malory, it’s a delight, it really is. Do you mind if I give you a call tomorrow? 8 am Greenwich Mean? I just don’t have my notebooks on me right now, as it happens. No. Yes. Of course. Ta for now.”

Adam held up his hand so Gansey couldn’t see him mouth _Ta for now_ with an arch look. Blue pressed her lips together. Gansey hung up and turned towards two expectant faces. 

“Hullo,” he said, offering his hand to Blue to shake. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I’m Gansey.” 

Blue gaped at it, and at him. Gansey put his hand down after a long silence. He didn’t look flustered, just confused. “So. What’s good here? I’m new in town.”

Blue continued to stare. “The pizza.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The pizza,” Blue repeated, beginning to blush furiously. 

Gansey frowned. “What about the pizza?”

“Well,” she said. “Just that most people get the pizza.” He squinted at her and then at the patch on her apron, which read NINO’S PIZZERIA.

“The sausage-olive combo is pretty good,” Adam supplied. 

Gansey gave him an easy smile. “That sounds delicious. Could I add goat cheese to that?”

“Goat cheese?” Blue asked. 

“I don’t think they have goat cheese,” Adam said. 

“We don’t have goat cheese,” Blue confirmed. She blinked, shook her head, and seemed to snap out of it. “What size pizza would you like? And is that for here or to go?”

“Medium,” Gansey said, looking relieved to finally be in a normal customer service interaction. “And for here. And one sweet tea, please, with mint if you have it.”

“I don’t think they have mint,” Adam said. 

“We don’t have mint,” Blue confirmed. 

“Ah, that’s alright,” Gansey said, “I have a plant in my car. Do you mind placing that order for me? I’ll be right back, just retrieving a sprig.” Keys in hand, he strode right back out of Nino’s, to a hideous orange Camaro in the parking lot. 

“Goodness gracious,” Adam said. He wasn’t sure what he meant by it. 

Blue blushed even further. “Who _is he_?”

“Well, he doesn’t know who you are, since you were too shellshocked to even introduce yourself.”

“Hey! I was—look, a prophecy is kind of overwhelming, okay?” She scoffed. “And he was—” She moved her hand about. “You know.”

Adam smirked. “He’s _just retrieving a sprig._ And he wants to know if Nino’s has goat cheese.”

“Shut up.”

“ _Most people get the pizza_ ,” Adam parroted. “How informative.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Blue said, breaking into a small grin. “I was overwhelmed. He called me ma’am. I ought to spit in his tea just for that.”

Gansey reappeared at the door, holding a messenger bag and, indeed, a sprig of mint. 

“Goodness gracious,” Adam said again. Blue made herself conspicuously busy. 

“I don’t believe I got your name,” Gansey said as he sat back down. 

“Adam.” They shook. “And her name is Blue.” 

“Interesting name,” he remarked. “Interesting girl.” 

“She’s nice,” said Adam, because he couldn’t think of anything else to volunteer. “Mostly.”

“You know her? Interesting.” Before Adam could answer, Gansey was opening the messenger bag and pulling books and notebooks out onto the counter. Adam had no time to warn him about how infrequently that counter got cleaned. “Are you from around here?” 

Adam blushed. His stupid accent. He hid it pretty well at Aglionby, or tried to, but it must have been unmistakable when he was around Blue: back-country, low-class. Gansey must have been able to smell the motor oil on him, must have been able to tell that he needed to think through his monthly budget for twenty seconds before he knew whether or not he could buy a coke. Then again, Gansey probably didn’t even know that there were people who needed to think for that long before they bought anything. 

If Adam had met one politician’s son, he’d met every last one. 

He tried to school his voice back into its Aglionby form. “I am.” _Ah em_. It was like a stain that wouldn’t come out.

Gansey, to his surprise, looked delighted by this. “Excellent! I was hoping I would meet a local.” He checked the spines of four different beat-up journals before he found the right one. “Do you happen to know whether there’s been any strange power outages in town lately?”

“Power outages?”

Gansey smiled, easy and open. Adam was just now realizing that he had never been able to be that friendly with anyone. “Yes, power outages. I’m tracing—well, this might sound a bit strange, but I’m interested in what some would call paranormal activity.”

Maybe Adam hadn’t met _every_ politician’s son. 

He flagged Blue down. She looked flustered and beautiful: more of her hair had come loose in the last few minutes. “What? What is it now?”

“Tell her what you just told me,” Adam said. 

“I’m—it sounds a bit odd, but I’m currently attempting to trace any signs of paranormal activity in Henrietta.” He cleared his throat. “Do you happen to know of any?”

Blue looked suspicious. “Why are you asking?”

Gansey considered how to start the sentence, and then considered how to restart it. “Tell me,” he said eventually. “Do the two of you know anything about Welsh kings?”


	2. The proudest, most disagreeable man in the world

“I don’t feel good about this.”

Blue braked hard as soon as the words were out of Adam’s mouth, as if she’d been waiting for the opportunity to nearly crash the car. Maybe she had; it would be a good display of independence from Maura. Adam caught himself on the glove box—the seatbelts in the Fox Way minivan had been decorative for years—and spluttered. “Eyes on the road!”

Blue scoffed. “I’m a good driver. We both know I’m a good driver. It is one of my better qualities.” She was wearing what must have been her party outfit: two layered pairs of paisley leggings and a turquoise crochet top with glittery pipe cleaners strung through it (which simply could not be comfortable). “Also, I was _going_ to say that you need to stop being so worried. Given the choice, you wouldn’t feel good about the sun shining.” 

“Eyes on the _road_ ,” Adam said again. “If I’m going to be a designated driver tonight, there needs to be something left for me to drive. And I usually don’t feel good about the sun shining, either. Means I’m probably gonna burn.” 

Blue scoffed again. Adam began to wonder if this was how the whole evening was gonna go. 

“Such a pessimist, Adam,” she said, as she made the wrong left turn with confidence. 

“You gotta go another block north,” he replied. “Claremont Avenue, not Carleton. Also, it’s realism. Not pessimism. I’m being realistic. You do realize we’re going to an Aglionby party.”

When Gansey had found out that Adam went to Aglionby, he had just about burst with enthusiasm. “Excellent!” Adam could still hear him saying. “Well, we’ll have to keep in touch, won’t we?” And just like that, Adam and Blue had scored themselves invitations to a party that was being thrown the next evening by some of Gansey’s “old family friends on the rowing team” to welcome him to Aglionby. 

Blue sighed. “Look, I want to go to a Raven Boy party even less than you do, okay? But if even Maura says we have to, we have to.”

“I know. I trust your mom. I’m just not expecting to enjoy it. Loud music and Aglionby kids and their— _girls_ , or whatever.” 

Blue smiled at the rear view mirror. Golden hour was long since gone, but she was still beautiful, a little luminous, even in the dim glow of the streetlights. “Is that what I’m gonna look like? Your _girl_ , or whatever?” Her purple-glitter eyeliner had smudged a little bit into the crease beside her eyes. It made her look like she’d been bruised three or four weeks ago, a thought that made Adam’s stomach turn. 

He laughed at her joke like he ought to, although, knowing Blue, she could probably hear that he didn’t find it funny. “You look like your own self.” 

Adam turned, looked at the street disappearing behind them in miniature in the right-hand side mirror. The houses were nice, growing nicer, growing farther and farther apart as they moved away from the town center. “And you were never mine.” He could feel Blue’s eyes snap to him. “Eyes on the road.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re supposed to look at the street you’re driving down so as to avoid incendiary or otherwise injurious collision—”

She slapped his shoulder. “You know what I was asking, Adam Parrish.”

Conversations like this were a horror Adam was not inclined to volunteer for. He sighed. “You never belonged to me.” 

Blue laughed a little, and Adam could hear her dryness just as she must have heard his, and it made him wince. This was it: the horror of knowing someone well. It acquainted you with truths about the both of you that you could have otherwise avoided. Life had been so much easier when Blue Sargent hadn’t forced him to deal with his own self. 

“I can never belong to anyone, Adam,” and her voice had softened. 

“I think that’s the house.” 

“But that doesn’t—Adam.” Blue braked abruptly once more. “Adam, look at me. Just because it’s not like that...”

“Like _that_ ,” Adam repeated. “I know, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know, but Adam, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.” 

If you could rely on Tad Carruthers for one thing, it was wonderfully inopportune timing. “Parrish! I thought you’d never come.” He was loud enough to hear through the window, but Blue rolled it down anyway. Adam gave her a look. She gave him a look. 

So _this_ was how the whole evening was going to go.

Tad was in all of Adam’s classes, and yet seemed to go out of his way to find extracurricular opportunities to irritate him as well. It ought to have been its own bullet point on his resumé for college. He was probably the closest thing Adam had to a friend at Aglionby, which should have made Adam feel better about him, but just made Adam feel worse about himself. He leaned into the car on his elbow. “Hey, Adam.”

“Hey.” Adam tried to look away from Tad’s polo shirt. The colors were unfortunate. “Thanks for having us.”

“My pleasure. Never thought I’d see you roll up to one of these things. But Declan Lynch is always saying I throw the best parties, so...” He gestured behind him, to the flashing lights inside the house. 

“Declan Lynch?” Blue asked. 

“He’s just some—”

“He’s a senior,” Tad cut in. “But he’s 19. He took a gap year last year. Some family issues. He has a brother who’s got some anger issues—I mean, just a real nutcase, _pardonnez moi francaise_ —but Declan himself is a real stand-up kind of guy. And so friendly. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a more friendly, stand-up kind of guy.”

“I see.” Blue was giving Adam panic-eyes. He gave her ‘ _it was you who rolled down the window_ ’-eyes back. “Well, look, we’d better—”

“Inside! Yes, get inside. I think Declan might actually be coming tonight, which would be totally awesome—I’m still waiting on the day that he throws a party at the house he rents in DC, though, during the summer. A really cool house. Like, my house is a nice house, I won’t lie. But the estate Declan rents is really something. Rosings Park. Just outside DC. It’s elegant, that’s the word. There’s these phenomenal _windows_ that are just—”

“We don’t want to keep you, Tad,” said Adam with as much restraint as he could muster. “Thanks for saying hi.”

“My pleasure. What was your girl’s name?”

Adam made a strangled noise despite himself. Blue said, with admirable restraint, “I’m not his girl. My name is Blue.” Tad extended a hand into the car, requiring Blue to stretch out of her seat so they could shake hands over Adam’s lap. “Nice to meet you.”

“Carruthers. Tad Carruthers. Great to meet you. You know, you’re quite beautiful. I’ll be sure to introduce you to Declan if he joins us, here’s hoping.”

“Here’s hoping,” said Blue, with enough sarcasm that Tad should have gotten it. But he seemed not to notice—probably still thinking about those windows. 

“Jesus Christ,” Blue said as soon as they’d pulled forward to park, under the white-gloved direction of someone who was apparently a hired traffic manager. 

“A ‘real stand-up kind of guy,’” Adam parroted. 

Blue laughed. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” said Adam. “Get ready.”

* * *

The party was many things: dark, loud, full of people. Mostly, though, it was _different_ . Adam had never been to one of these, had never thought it worth his time to go, probably _would_ never have gone if it hadn’t been for the insistence of the ladies at Fox Way that this was somehow important. 

It was like a masquerade ball from a bodice-ripper novel, an alternate world where the rules applied even less. Here were his classmates—always a little indolent, reckless, egotistical—now off their leashes. There were some good surprises: Noah Czerny grabbed Adam by the arm as soon as he and Blue were in the door, and escorted them directly to the drinks table, and didn’t give Adam any shit for only wanting a coke, and poured Blue a tequila sunrise with glee. It glittered. Noah made her swirl it about in the little translucent cup so they could all watch.

Then there were the bad surprises: as he had to remind Blue after a few sips of their drinks, they were there on a mission: ingratiate themselves with Gansey. Unfortunately, the first place they went to try to accomplish said mission was a room with a horde of rowing bros who were playing some game involving beer, cups, and a dining room table that was probably worth more than every piece of furniture in 300 Fox Way combined. One of them noticed Adam, and was starting to say something indubitably cruel. Adam grabbed Blue’s arm and fled: he didn’t feel like dealing with it tonight. 

An hour of wading through what seemed to be every teenager in western Virginia, and they still hadn’t found Gansey. Noah Czerny kept reappearing in strange places, and asking Blue to dance, and now, in the upstairs hallway, where the crowd was a little thinner, they were both giggling and dancing to a song with nonsense lyrics that thudded terribly in Adam’s one good ear. 

Adam looked around himself and felt a pit opening at the bottom of his stomach. It wasn’t envy, for the drunkenness or the lavishness of the house—it was despair. _Lonesomeness_ , said Persephone in the back of Adam’s head. _You don’t have to be alone to be lonesome_. 

Adam watched a group of his classmates cheer as a pair of them shotgunned a series of beers, shirts wetting with the offspray. He didn’t understand why these people, who could spend their ample time and money on anything, spent it on this. What was the point? 

“I’m gonna go to the restroom,” he told Blue. She just sang lyrics back at him. 

The first bathroom he found had an abstract sculpture and toilet paper with an unconscionable number of plys. Adam sat down on the toilet lid and put his head in his hands. Why was he here? Why exactly did Blue need to spend time with Gansey? Just because the psychics had agreed it was ‘highly important’ to her ‘destiny’ or something. 

_As if you’re enough for her_. Of course it was her ‘destiny’ or something to leave Adam alone in the dirt in pursuit of some silver-spooned guy. 

But he wouldn’t be alone in the dirt for long. College. College was three semesters away. Adam might still be alone, but he would be out of Henrietta, and there was no way in hell he was ever coming back. 

Blue was waiting for him right outside the bathroom door, and as soon as he’d opened it she grabbed his wrist and began to drag him down the hallway. “Hello!” 

Adam frowned at her. “Hello. Where’s Noah?” 

“I found—you’ll never guess,” Blue whisper-yelled into his ear. Her breath smelled like orange juice and alcohol. “Guess.”

“Gansey?” Adam hazarded wearily. 

Blue gasped. “How did you know?!” She prodded him towards the stairs. “Come on.”

“How many drinks have you had?”

She stopped on the top step and slapped his shoulder. “I’m not drunk. Two and a half.” She pointed down the stairs, to the middle of the main hallway. “I’m not drunk. But look.”

Gansey stood in the middle of the house’s grand foyer, impeccable despite the havoc about him, hand around a red solo cup. It was absurd to see him holding something so modern and cheap. An expertly defaced renaissance painting. 

“He danced with me,” said Blue, right into Adam’s ear from behind him on the stairs. “But then I realized I lost you so I had to go rescue you from the treacherous grip of the bathroom.”

“I see,” said Adam. He didn’t think about Gansey holding Blue, or what ‘dancing with’ her meant, or anything at all. He emptied his brain of all of that. He couldn’t deal with it tonight. He just stood there on the stairs and let the party float by him, and watched Gansey, amiable and open, talking excitedly to someone. 

And then Adam realized he was being watched. 

“Who’s that?” The stranger was tall and dark and had a shaved head, and stood behind Gansey like a security detail, nursing a can of beer. He watched Adam, or maybe Blue, or maybe just the staircase as a whole, with icy blue eyes. 

“That’s Ronan Lynch.” Noah had appeared out of nowhere on the side of Adam’s bad ear. 

“That guy wouldn’t talk to me,” said Blue. “Gansey tried to introduce us and he just walked away. So rude.” On cue, Ronan flicked his gaze away, disinterested and unaffected. 

“Gansey’s old friend,” said Noah. “Word has it Gansey’s only transferred to Aglionby to get Ronan to go back to school.”

“He left school?” Adam asked, but before anyone could answer, they found Gansey before them. 

“Jane!” he said, smiling up the staircase. “Oh, and Adam and Noah! A delight. Good to see you!” Gansey leaned up the staircase to shake their hands, then turned around. “Ronan. There’s some people I’d like you to meet.”

Ronan Lynch looked at Gansey and then at them, and practically scoffed. He leaned towards Gansey as if he wouldn’t still have to yell to be heard over the din of the party. 

“Why the hell would you want to introduce me to them?”

Gansey said something Adam didn’t catch. 

Ronan actually scoffed. “I’m not interested.” 

“What about Adam Parrish? He goes to Aglionby, incredibly smart, and he’s going to be in my history class. You two should get to know each other.”

Ronan looked at Adam with a cold glare and then turned away coolly. “Please, don’t stoop to the local hicks for company.”

“Ronan!” Gansey said, but Lynch was already headed towards the drinks table. “Oh, I do apologize. Ronan isn’t one for large parties.”

“I’ll say,” Adam said under his breath. 

“Right?” Blue replied. 

“Anyways. Jane,” Gansey said, regaining composure, extending his hand up to Blue. “I wonder if I might have this dance.”

* * *

“Well,” said Maura Sargent, as she piled banana pancakes onto the mismatched plates at the kitchen table. “Did you spend time with Gansey?” Adam had slept over on a pull-out couch in the reading room: Maura had refused to let him bike back to St. Agnes at 2 AM. Adam couldn’t figure out why, but his tolerance for unreciprocal hospitality was much higher than normal when it came to Maura Sargent.

Blue smiled, embarrassed. “He danced with me. Twice.”

Maura frowned. “Like, ballroom dancing?”

“No, like dancing dancing,” said Blue. “Mom, what kind of party did you think this was?”

“Modern society has a much more fluid approach to choreologic etiquette than it once did,” mused Persephone from her seat on a counter. “Given the indefinite approach to the duration of dancing together, how can he dance with you twice?”

“I don’t want to know,” said Calla, appearing in the doorway. “Glad you had fun, Blue, but dancing with Kid President isn’t going to cut it. I told you. He knows something that you need to know.”

Blue sighed. “How am I supposed to know what it is? Call him up to ask ‘hey, is there a piece of information that you’re fated—’”

“A letter!” Persephone said suddenly. 

“What?”

“A letter from... a letter has just been delivered.”

Sure enough, Orla whisked into the room, deposited a letter in Blue’s lap, and whisked back out. Adam would have missed her if he’d blinked, or if she had been wearing even a smidge less lime green.The kitchen was happily silent as Blue tore it open. She read it, then flipped it over, then read it again. 

“Well?” asked Calla. 

“Is it from a ghost?” said Persephone. 

“Surely it isn’t from a ghost,” said Maura wisely. “They would have quite the doozy navigating the US Postal System.”

“Noah,” Blue blurted out. “It’s from Noah.”

“Noah?”

“One of my classmates,” said Adam. “We met him at the party. He’s pretty nice. A little weird. He lives in this weird warehouse.”

“He mentions it here,” said Blue. “Monmouth Manufacturing.”

Maura nearly dropped her pan. “Monmouth?” 

“Monmouth!” 

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Calla. “Monmouth Manufacturing is let at last.”

“What’s Monmouth?” Blue gave Adam an accusatory look. “Why does everyone know what Monmouth is?”

Persephone tilted her head to the side. “Interesting.” 

“Monmouth Manufacturing is an abandoned building on the south side of town, and one of the places that wouldn’t stop coming up when Gansey arrived,” Calla grumbled. “Maybe they’re roommates.”

Czerny and Gansey? Adam hadn’t pegged them as friends, much less roommates. “I don’t think that’s very likely—”

“Yes!” Persephone chirped. 

“Roommates.” Maura set the pan down, and that was that. She turned to Blue. “What else does it say?”

“That he’s inviting me for drinks next Friday night, that he’ll have a couple of friends there, and that... his roommates will be out of town for the evening.”

“I need the car that evening. Work thing,” Calla sniffed. 

“I think she should go. Be in his space. Get to know him better. But please don’t drink,” said Maura. She then amended: “too much. And drink lots of water. And please eat, we can pack you some yogurt—”

“They’ll have food—”

“Oh, let her go!” said Orla, whirling into the kitchen once more. Lime green should not have been her color, and yet here it was in spades. “Let her get out a little! Maybe she’ll finally get with a man who gets her to stop being so uptight—no offense, Adam, but you’re the only person I know more uptight than Blue.” She frowned at him. “A bad influence.”

“How the hell will she get there?” asked Calla, before Blue could protest in a manner physically injurious to Orla’s person. “Again, no car.”

Persephone cocked her head to the side. “Anything, it has been said, can be taken in excess. And yet excess itself may be taken in excess.” She inclined her head towards Adam, as she often did before she said something entirely inscrutable in the english language. “Excess implies absence. Absence implies defense. Defense implies offense. Which one of those would you choose, Adam Parrish?”

“No!” said Orla, before Adam had time to even understand what he was meant to do. “Excess implies weakness. And if Blue takes her bike, and oh, I don’t know, has a drink, maybe a drink and a half—if her little frame can handle it—she will be quite unable to bike back. Ergo, she will have to stay the night. And see Gansey again.” Orla clapped her hands with finality. Blue and Adam made horrified eye contact. 

“ _Orla_ ,” Maura intoned. 

“It will rain that night,” said Persephone. “She won’t be able to bike back in the rain. It will be thunderstorms. Much too much thunder. Much too distracting.” 

“Maybe Mom can come pick me up?” Blue suggested. 

“No!” said Orla again, spinning about where there was really no space to spin. It was a miracle she didn’t knock anything over. “I see a vision...” 

“Orla dear,” said Maura. 

“Cut the crap,” said Calla. 

Persephone floated down off the counter. “I think,” she said, and paused. “The rain is important. We should confer. Maura, Calla.” 

Orla swished out of the room after the three of them, leaving Blue and Adam alone with a wink. Adam ate another small bite of pancake. If he didn’t push himself too hard at the factory, he could make this meal last until dinner. 

“Are you alright?” Blue asked. 

“What do you mean? Aren’t we worried about you? And your crazy—I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, I like your family a lot, but why send you over in a thunderstorm? Can’t it wait?”

“No, I—that conversation we had last night,” she said. “On the way there. And then at the party, when you went to the bathroom. You didn’t seem—is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Blue made a noise of frustration, set down her fork and looked away. “I dunno, Adam, that’s why I’m asking.”

 _Nothing is ever alright with me_. “I’m fine.” _I can’t afford to not be._

“Did Ronan get to you last night?”

That had not been the question Adam was expecting. “Ronan Lynch?”

“Yeah,” said Blue. “He said some pretty mean stuff.”

Adam scoffed, half-laugh. “Blue, I hear worse at Aglionby all the damn time. Besides, I wouldn’t let Ronan Lynch get to me if he was yelling in my face. You remember what Tad Carruthers said about Declan Lynch’s younger brother?”

“I guess—wait.” Blue crinkled her nose in confusion. “That guy is the younger brother of the same guy whose boots Tad is licking?”

“Yep. I guess Gansey’s here to keep him in line.”

“Huh,” said Blue. “How is _Gansey_ friends with _him_?”

“Beats me.” Adam took a sip of his coffee. “But if he thinks he can hurt me that easily, he’s got another thing coming.”

“You can go,” said Maura, sticking her head through the doorway. “But you have to stay the night.”

“Have to?” Blue asked. 

“Thunderstorms, remember?” Maura said. “You have to go. And you have to stay. Take your bike.”


	3. Indeed, I do not dare

Adam had thought he had Saturday off this week, but it turned out he had been incorrect about that. He had been in the middle of his calc homework when the call came. 

Poor Mrs. Ramirez. He almost felt like buying a cellphone just to spare her the trouble of having to climb up to get him every time. 

The midmorning sun was bright as Adam biked over an empty, muddy lot, on the way to rescue Blue from Monmouth Manufacturing before either Gansey or Maura had a chance to see what she looked like attired in a dreadful hangover. Despite the light, though, it was still cold enough to bite through the Aglionby sweater he was wearing under his hoodie. 

Adam wanted to like mornings. It was just that most mornings he didn’t have time to. 

It turned out he didn’t need to check the address that Blue had dictated to him queasily over the church office phone, because Monmouth loomed, a giant in the flatness of Henrietta’s streetscape. 

The ground floor door was open, and Adam locked his bike to one of the beams in the strangely empty space. The stairs creaked under his weight, and he slowly pushed the second floor door open. 

The room had high ceilings and too many books and a whole mess of cardboard on the floor, and a bed, even though this seemed to be the central room of the apartment, and it was far too large to be a studio. There was no sign of Blue. 

There were, however, four people standing at the other end of the room, near another door. 

“I simply don’t think it’s sanitary,” said a woman with a high, dark ponytail. “I mean, the toilet, next to the fridge, Dick, really?”

“She means it’s fucking gross, dude,” said the slouching boy in a backwards baseball cap on the other side of the group. “Even I’d say so. Jesus, Lynch, why don’t you put the kitchen in a corner of the main room? Or downstairs? Or literally any other fucking building, man?”

Ronan Lynch snarled away from the group: “Because I can’t fucking go back to my fucking _home_ —oh,” and he was now staring straight at Adam, who in turn was now realizing he had technically broken in. There was still no sign of Blue. 

“Adam!” said Gansey, upon turning. Adam was beginning to think he simply didn’t know you were allowed to say people’s names with less than full enthusiasm. “I didn’t expect to see you! Helen, this is Adam, he’s in our year at Aglionby.”

Helen, who was clearly of the Gansey pedigree, pursed her lips. “Are you quite alright?”

“Sorry?” Adam had felt quite alright right up until she had asked. 

“Cause you’re covered in shit, man,” snarled the guy with the baseball cap. 

The three other sets of eyes followed the words to his feet. The jeans had been clean enough when he’d left the house, but had evidently gotten hit by backsplash on the bike. His work shoes had also not been exactly peachy to start with. Adam had thought he knew this, thought he thought through which shoes he wore where, but realized in that moment that he had never really thought about it until right then. Not in the way Ganseys thought about it. 

Helen’s lips stayed pursed, and Ronan’s glare remained one of disgust. For his part, at least, Gansey seemed to be trying to stay valiant. 

It had been silent for too long. 

Adam shrugged. “I biked.” 

“Why on earth did you bike?” Helen asked. “Isn’t it awfully cold out for that?”

The silence resumed. 

“Who doesn’t love a good bike ride in the morning?” Gansey supplied finally. “I’m sure we could all use the fresh air.”

Ronan snorted, raised a final desultory eyebrow, and skulked into his room. “Ronan,” Gansey scolded, and little slips of paper taped to the door fluttered as it slammed shut. “I do apologize—”

“Don’t fuck with him, man,” said the strange man, raising his voice and waving a hand. “Enough people do enough apologizing for his drama queen bullshit. If he can’t even be polite enough to host me in his bizarre—well, I don’t know if you’d even call this a home—living situation, then maybe he shouldn’t be fuckin’ livin’ in it!” The last part was very pointedly directed towards the door. 

“Joseph,” Gansey pleaded—so _that’s_ who that was—as Joseph Kavinsky began to knock repeatedly on Ronan’s door. “Adam, I’m sorry, it seems you’ve caught us at a bit of an inconvenient time. Helen is visiting from DC, you see, and Ronan was just—had stayed the night—well—Kavinsky came back with Ronan, and—” Kavinsky’s knocking grew more insistent. 

Gansey had to raise his voice. “Well, Helen and I thought we’d come and Ronan and I could give them a tour of Monmouth, maybe go out to lunch afterwards, but as you can see,” he continued, practically shouting over Kavinsky’s pounding, “that is not going quite—” 

Ronan yanked his door open and stalked back out into the main room, and pushed into the bathroom that was apparently also a kitchen, door slamming behind him. 

“—to plan.”

“I see,” said Adam, with as much delicacy as he could manage. 

“Why are you fucking here, man?” sneered Kavinsky, attention redirected from Ronan to an easier target. “Someone give you the wrong address for the soup kitchen?”

The sound of a scuffle came from behind the third door. It cracked open, and Blue stumbled out of it, dressed in Aglionby sweatpants and looking dead to the world. 

“He’s here for me.”

Helen’s eyebrows had stayed conspicuously level through most of the past 90 seconds, but now they arched upwards. “And you are?”

“Blue!” said Gansey, and at least he had the capacity to sound confused when he said names. “How nice of you to… join us?”

“I just—” she began. “Noah. Here with Noah.”

“But it’s not like that!” came Noah’s voice through the door. Blue put her head in her hands. 

* * *

“Nino’s?” asked Blue, as she and Adam emerged from their retreat into Noah’s room. “It’s 10 in the morning.” She now had something in her stomach besides alcohol, and Adam had significantly lower self-esteem by association. Helen, Gansey, and Ronan, meanwhile, were sitting around a table, eating delivered Nino’s.

“Trust me,” said Helen, “I had no say in the matter. You’re welcome to have some,” she added, looking them up and down. “Seeing as the both of you certainly need it.” 

Adam wasn’t sure if Blue looked more hungover or he looked more underfed: they were pretty much neck-and-neck. That was why Adam was there, after all: to bring a water bottle and a thing of juice and a margarine sandwich and maybe also to keep her company until she felt strong enough to walk home. 

Whatever he did, he was not to bring Maura there. Blue was, under no circumstances, willing to bring Fox Way’s mess into Monmouth, or to bring Monmouth’s chaos under Fox Way’s judgement. So there Adam was: the middle-man, the aid mission. 

“Kavinsky had to leave us, I’m afraid,” said Gansey. “Other business to attend to.” 

Blue was scarfing down her slice with gratitude but not much grace, and Adam picked at his, careful not to belie the fact that it would be his lunch. Meanwhile, he watched Lynch’s face carefully, the still line of his brow and jaw, the ice of his eyes. Ronan was silent, though, betraying no emotion. 

_Cold_ , Adam thought, his face was cold, but uncalculated: blatant in its blankness. 

“So, Adam,” said Helen. She was clearly unsure how to make conversation with people like him. “What do you study?”

“I’m sorry?” 

“What are your academic interests?”

School. Wasn’t that enough? Aglionby was an interest all its own for Adam: it was a lifestyle. He didn’t know what Helen could possibly mean besides that. 

“Adam is, I hear, very good, nay, a near genius at Latin,” said Gansey gallantly. 

Ronan’s scowl, of course, deepened, but still he was silent. Adam supposed he found Latin a stupid tool in the face of money. Maybe he was right. What good was conjugation anyway? What was it going to win him? Well, college admissions, hopefully—but then again, Ronan definitely did not need to worry about not being able to buy his way through that game. 

Adam shrugged with a calculated amount of humility. “ _Sapienus_ _non sum_.” _I’m not a genius._

Gansey smiled at Helen: his dog had done its trick. “See?”

Lynch inclined his head. “ _Sapiens_ _non sum_ ,” he said, so quietly that Adam almost didn’t hear. 

“Sorry?”

“ _Certe non es_.” _You certainly aren’t_. “To be good at Latin you have to actually be able to decline the nouns,” he added. 

“Oh, really?” Adam asked, trying to sound good-natured about it. “Well, think less of me, if you dare.”

Ronan smirked. “I don't dare.” 

Gansey looked like he was in physical pain. “Well, Adam is certainly very _good_ —“

“How pleasant Latin is,” said Helen, her words buttressed by the knowledge that this was the correct opinion, the next step in this song and dance that Ronan seemed to refuse to play along with. His ego was so big it probably distracted him from the need to be civil to other people, Adam mused. But his money got him Helen’s attention anyway. “I love the way it sounds spoken out loud. Ronan does speak it aloud so nicely.” 

Ronan stood and threw his pizza crust at a trash bin. It missed. “Dick, do we have to do this all day, or can I get on with things?”

Gansey’s brow furrowed. “I suppose it depends what kind of things you want to get on with.” Ronan snorted and began to leave. “Wait, I was hoping to enlist—well, since Helen’s here, and so serendipitously, Adam and Blue as well, I was hoping to ask all of your advice on something. It’s to do with my model of Henrietta,” Gansey said, and pointed to the cardboard mess behind him on the floor. “And the direction that energy seems to be flowing through the town.”

“Dick,” said Helen with a slight frown. “Please tell me you haven’t been inserting yourself”—Blue’s and Adam’s eyes locked for the briefest but most entendred of seconds—“into dangerous situations again.” Right, the wasp nastiness, the near-death when he was 12 or 13: he’d told them about it at Nino’s the day they’d met. 

“Relax, Helen, nothing’s dangerous yet. But I’m tracing those power outages I’ve told all of you about.” He walked around the model, indicating little blue and red flags arcing across it. “I’m pretty sure this is pointing us in some direction,” Gansey said, “But I can’t for the life of me figure it out.”

“Why don’t you let these two get home?” said Helen. “Is Ronan’s advice not good enough? He wasn’t raised too far away, and besides, I think he has a better understanding of what you’re after than any of us.”

“He does seem the expert," Adam said. 

Ronan gave him a glare. Adam’s heart skipped a beat: he was looking straight through him. “I never said I was an expert.”

“You did say you were a genius, though, and I’ll have to agree. Your genius is unforgiving.”

“I never said I was a genius.” Ronan looked displeased by the effort of having to speak. His next words came in a burst of what seemed to actually be a good-faith effort at conducting conversation: Adam wondered that the effort did not knock him over. “And I’m unforgiving, maybe, but I think I have good reason. No reason in continuing to play along with people who aren’t worth it.” 

Adam cocked his head to the side. “No forgiveness? Well, finally, you have a flaw.”

“Everybody has ‘em.” 

“And yours is to hate everyone?” 

“And yours,” Ronan said, “Is to misunderstand them on purpose.” 

Adam held Ronan’s gaze evenly. He was _not_ backing down. Not from anyone, in general, if he could help it, but _especially_ not from Ronan Lynch. Neither of them looked away; neither of them moved. 

Gansey coughed.

“What were you talking about, Dick?” said Helen, brightly. 

“You mentioned power outages,” Blue added. 

"Power outages!” said Noah, materializing next to Adam. “Probably Ronan’s fault.” Ronan finally looked away from Adam to give him a glare. 

“Yes,” Gansey said, “thank you, Jane. There seems to be a line here, along this... well, you see, the blue flags?”

“It goes past Nino’s,” Blue pointed out, “And then... Out of town.” 

Gansey nodded. “I was hoping we might find clues if we followed it out of town. I thought we could make an excursion of it, drive along here, and then up into the mountains over here—”

“No,” said Adam, “Wait, not there.” 

“No?”

“No, the— may I?” Gansey nodded. Adam leant down and shifted the outer buildings of Henrietta south by a few inches. The line arced away from the mountains now, a more even curve. “It would go down into the forest.”

“Ooh!” said Noah, “Dude, I love 92, that highway’s super fun to drive at night.”   
  


“I think you’d have to take Valley Road,” Adam replied.

”Well, that’s no fun.”

Blue shook her head. “I think Adam’s right. Leaving town that way, Valley Road’s your best bet.”

Noah pouted. “But the highway. The highway goes right there.”

“That highway’s been closed since I was in middle school,” Adam said. He’d driven it once, with his dad, when Robert Parrish had decided that 12 was about time for Adam to know how to drive a car if he was going to be useful. 

“You must have just not gone that way in a while,” Gansey explained, “Right?”

“Well, dude,” said Noah, shrugging. “I dunno. I’ve been dead for seven years.”

”Ah, Noah,” Gansey said, half to Helen. “Your humor. Now Valley Road, was it?”


	4. Allowing something for fortune and figure

Adam came over to 300 Fox Way the next week to find a man in the phone room with Orla. “Oh, sorry—looking for Blue—” he stumbled over his words on his way out.

“Oh, Adam?” asked Orla. “I think you might actually want to meet my guest.”

Adam, nearly freed from the snare of social interaction with someone besides Blue, reluctantly caught himself on the doorframe. “Alright.”

Before he’d even had a chance to turn around, the man was standing, grinning, and extending a hand. “Hello there,” he said. “Adam Parrish, isn’t it?”

It was Colin Greenmantle. 

“Mr. Greenmantle,” said Adam, abruptly. 

“I took over teaching this fine young man’s Latin class just yesterday,” Greenmantle informed Orla, while giving Adam a strangling handshake. 

“He did,” said Adam, trying to redirect his brain from ‘deal with Orla’ to ‘earn college recommendation letter’ and fumbling the transition. “It’s been two great days of class.” Truth be told, it had been a rough two days start to finish: there was no mention given of whence their previous teacher had vanished, only Greenmantle storming in and setting up camp. He’d scanned the obscure line of Catullus pre-scrawled on the chalkboard by Ronan Lynch, turned, and locked eyes with Lynch immediately. 

Lynch, for his part, immediately stormed out. Adam had only been going to school with him for two weeks now, but it appeared that he cared to illustrate his supposed genius in a manner that did not involve actually attending class. 

The shock and horror of the entire experience had been slightly alleviated by the clean cut of Colin’s jaw and trim neatness of his expensive suit, but Adam was trying his very hardest not to think about that. 

“Glad to hear it,” Greenmantle said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Well, I’d best be off. Thank you for the reading, Miss…?”

“Oh,” said Orla in a syrupy voice, “just Orla is just fine. Have a nice day, Mr. Greenmantle.” 

When he was gone down the stairs, Orla sighed. “Isn’t he just dreamy?”

Adam shrugged. “He’s something.” 

“Oh, you poor boy,” she cooed. “Don’t try to lie to me.”

Adam scrunched up his face. “I know you can’t read my mind. I know it doesn’t work like that.” 

Orla tsked. “Just saying, I like a good suit, too.” 

“I’m going,” Adam said, blushing. “See you.” 

“Blue’s not in!” Orla cried out as he made his way down the stairs. “She’s at Nino’s! And you definitely won’t win her back while she’s on the clock!”

* * *

Lo and behold, the psychic was right. Blue was on the clock and certainly not in the mood to be won, but it looked like Tad Carruthers was trying his luck. 

“—and, as they say,— well, to quote the Constitution of the United States of America—‘A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the—’”

“Hey,” Adam said, and by God, he’d interrupt the chair of the Harvard Undergraduate Admissions Committee to have Blue look at him again with such relief. “What’s up?”

“Hello!” said Tad. “I was just discussing—” 

“I just brought Tad his pizza,” said Blue. 

“—and I was about to read to her from this,” Tad said, waving around a leather-bound pocket Constitution embossed with his initials. “The word of God. Or, well, Thomas Jefferson. Close enough!” 

“I’d better get going back to the counter,” said Blue.

“Well, Adam, maybe you’d like to join me,” Tad offered. “If Blue is to be otherwise engaged. I gather your folks are fans of the Constitution.” 

Blue looked at Adam. Adam looked at Tad. “My folks?”

Tad gave a small cough. “Well—locals.” 

Adam pictured what Tad was probably picturing and smiled wryly. “Oh, yeah. Totally. Can’t get enough.” 

“Good man!”

“But I’m only here to—well, Blue, remember how I left my jacket here?”

She frowned. “Your jack—”

“And you have it in the back room?”

Blue hauled herself onto the life preserver like a drowning woman. “Yeah, yeah, yes, back room, nice talk Tad, better get that jacket, Adam,” and she towed him into the hallway outside the restrooms. 

“You know we don’t actually have a back room, right?” she said, once they got there. She was wearing green eyeshadow, almost certainly pilfered from Orla, that matched the beads on her clearly-handmade earrings. 

“Yeah,” said Adam, “I know. And Thomas Jefferson didn’t actually write the Constitution.” 

Blue gave him a look. “I don’t know that that’s what’s important here.”

“Well, he was in France.” 

“Again, Adam—”

“Couldn’t exactly hop on the Google doc—” 

Blue put her foot down. “Are you avoiding me?”

“Am I avoiding you?”

She shrugged. “That’s the question.” 

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen you in a week and a half,” she pointed out. “Did I do something?”

“Blue—”

“Something besides not kiss you?”

Adam winced. That was a twist of a knife he had managed to ignore for a little while at least. “It’s been, like, six months, Blue.” 

“It’s been two,” she corrected him, “And I would rather you talk to me than have you avoid me.” 

“I haven’t been—shit, Blue.” Adam ran his hands through his hair, and then did it again. “I haven’t—been trying to avoid you, school has just been really busy, and then work, and—”

“Okay, you’re okay. I just—” She slumped against the veneer of the hallway wall. “Don’t want you out there, taking the world on, on your own.” 

Adam nodded. He exhaled. This was fine. Blue wasn’t mad, somehow. Things would be fine. “How’s Gansey?”

“Adam—”

He put his hands up. “I’m just asking.” 

Blue sighed, then smiled. “He called this week. To ask if I was free to go spelunking, or something.” 

“Spelunking?”

“I said no.”

Adam nodded. “Good rule. No spelunking on the first date.” 

“Shut up. The whole house is mad at me for it.”

“Mad at you?” 

“Well, you know, the whole ‘I’m supposed to go out of my way to seduce him’ thing or something stupid like that. Which they _still_ won’t explain. And I’m not about to give up a whole Friday night shift just to go spelunking with some boy for no reason.” 

“You like him,” said Adam, before he really realized he was thinking it. She gave him a quizzical look: what was he trying at? “I’m not saying that to—to try to bait you, into a fight, or something, I just—” he sighed. “Look, Blue, I think it’s great. It’s great that you like him.” 

“Is it?”

“It is,” he replied, willing himself to believe what he was saying. Well, he did believe it, some parts of it: “I want you to be happy, more than anything else.” Other parts, not so much: “And I’m glad Gansey is here.” 

Blue shook her head. “I don’t even know him that well.” 

“But you do,” Adam said. “Like him.”

“I guess,” Blue replied. “I guess I do.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder. It was meant to be casual, but she had to reach pretty far up to accomplish it. “I’m trying not to be too heavy-handed about it.” 

“Oh?”

“I don’t want the cosmic-whatever—well, that’s daunting, isn’t it? I’m trying to play it cool. Not look too invested.”

“What if he thinks you don’t like him?”

Blue shrugged. “Sounds like a him problem.”

* * *

This winter was turning out to be a top-hits list of Adam having to suffer through things that made him viscerally uncomfortable. Take, for instance, the second week of February, which brought an Aglionby fundraiser that he was required to attend, as proof that the school was spending their donated money on charity cases who properly deserved it. 

Adam had been eating canapés with people who had “ _Generous Benefactor_ ” at the bottom of their nametags for two hours. It was good networking, good to know people who had power, but it was also suffocating. He could afford a break. He slipped to the back of the room, close enough to the service door into the kitchen to not stand out, and watched. 

So this was what the top looked like: not just their sons but the cream of the crop themselves. _One day_ , Adam thought. Not even that he would have kids to send to Aglionby, but simply that he would be the sort of person who might. 

Colin Greenmantle caught his eye and, excusing himself from a conversation with someone Adam could’ve sworn he’d seen on C-SPAN, made his way over to Adam. “Mr. Greenmantle.”

“Mr. Parrish. A pleasure as always. How’s your night going?”

“Just fine, sir.” 

“C’mon. These things are always a drag. You don’t have to play nice about it. It amazes me that some students show up of their own accord.” 

Adam nodded equivocally. He got the sense that Greenmantle could make small talk with a wall; it was hard to figure out how to distinguish yourself. “Loyalty is important.”

“I couldn’t agree more. But surely you wish some people would extend it to things besides their names on buildings at their alma maters, no?” Greenmantle gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Some bonds are more important, though less tax-deductible.”

“I completely agree, sir,” he said. “But I do think my classmates’ hearts are in the right place.” It was a boldfaced lie, and both of them knew it. 

“Well,” said Greenmantle, “most of them. Some of them... less so.”

“I couldn’t help noticing,” Adam said carefully, “that Ronan Lynch has a bit of an attendance problem.” 

Greenmantle barked out a laugh. “You could say that. But I can’t give my opinion, the Lynch family and I go too far back. It won’t be a fair perspective.”

“I can give you my opinion,” Adam offered. “I don’t like him very much.” 

“Ha! Look, Mr. Parrish—Adam, if I may,” Greenmantle said confidentially. “Let’s just say that Ronan Lynch and I: we’re not on the best of terms. But I don’t speak ill of the grieving. That would be unkind.” 

Adam frowned. Ronan and Greenmantle? “Ronan doesn’t strike me as particularly kind,” he hazarded. 

“Indeed,” said Colin. “Indeed.” 

“What I don’t get is how he’s friends with Gansey.”

And there it was. It felt freeing to admit it, that that was perhaps the core of it all, the thing that irked him the most. He could be terrible to Adam and still have Gansey’s sincere loyalty. _That_ was the worst of the Lynch birthright, to Adam: the undue good opinion of people like Richard Campbell Gansey III. 

“Oh,” said Greenmantle, “I know. Well, let’s say that he recognizes power, and knows how to manipulate it.” He paused, shook his head. “I didn’t want to have to put it this way, Adam,” he continued, “but the long and short of it is, Ronan Lynch doesn’t just play the piece-of-shit game for looks. I try not to dig up bad blood, I really do, and, well, I certainly don’t tell people about it.”

Adam watched him chew his lip, heard the gears turn. “Well, I can trust you with a little secret, right? I was an old friend of Ronan’s father, Niall Lynch. We used to do business together: we were great partners. But Niall—well, you’ve heard, right?” Colin mimed something whacking into his head. “Terrible incident. Ghastly that they haven’t found who did it. And as soon as he’s dead, Ronan bullies his whole family into cutting off contact with me. With no explanation. Deeply immature. Completely tanked my business, for no reason I can fathom.” 

“Really?” Adam asked. Finally, a piece of Ronan’s backstory that sort of made sense. Adam couldn’t reconcile the old friendship with Gansey, didn’t know what to make of the strange snark at Monmouth, and had mixed feelings about the Catullus, but he knew exactly what to do with the news that Ronan had screwed someone over. “That’s terrible.” 

Greenmantle nodded. “It ruined me. I’m still trying to come back from it. But, well,” he gestured to the auditorium. “New job, new me, right? You get that, Adam, don’t you?”

“I do, sir,” Adam said. 

“Good man. Well, I won’t keep you all night. Good luck surviving this thing.” He was gone with a pat on Adam’s shoulder. 

So all of the snarling wasn’t just an act, or some weird problem with Adam specifically. Ronan really did just _suck._ He resolved to steer entirely clear. Gansey may have been cosmically-required, not to mention a genuinely good person, but Adam had no need for Ronan Lynch in his life. 


	5. Have you seen any pleasant men?

Adam had been pretty set on never putting his life in someone else’s hands ever again, and certainly he had never thought that someone might be Ronan Lynch. But here he was, a rope latched to the belt on his waist, with Gansey in front, and Blue and then Ronan behind him. 

The things he let Gansey talk him into. 

Blue had taken the news of Ronan’s undeniable evil mildly when he’d told her that morning, as they’d stood in the parking lot of St. Agnes, waiting for Gansey to pick them up. “Really? He did that?”

“I know.” He’d shaken his head. “God, he sucks. Can’t see anything past himself.”

“It’s—well, that teacher has no reason to lie to you, I guess. But still. Gansey’s best friend? Doing something that shitty?”

“I don’t know,” said Adam. “I just know what I told you.”

“Hmm.” Blue could be so much like Maura sometimes that it scared him, between the look on her face and the care in her voice. “Maybe they’ve just each misunderstood each other? Like maybe there are other people in whatever business that is trying to get in between them, you know?”

Adam laughed. “Wait, you have to come up with a reason for those other people to have done what they did, so they can be innocent too.”

“Piss off.”

He toed at the ground next to Blue’s painted canvas sneakers. “I’m just saying, stop trying to exonerate him. Some people are terrible.”

“I know, Adam,” she said, “I’m just trying—” and then the Suburban roared into the lot, ready for spelunking. 

“My point is,” Adam said now as they walked further into the cave, “I think the way college admissions are run, the well-rounded students thing, is good in theory, but I also think it asks a lot.” The beams from their spelunking helmets—a thing you apparently just _owned_ a set of four of, if you were Gansey—crisscrossed and waved about as they trundled on further into the cave. It was strange to listen to his own voice echo off the walls, to hear himself on repeat. 

“Interesting,” said Gansey. “Tell me more.” 

Adam tried to figure out how to make it make sense for Gansey. “I thought high school was just about getting good grades, but everyone does a million things for their resume, too. It’s amazing to me that all of these students have to do all of these different things to be prepared for college. It can be hard to balance, and it’s unrealistic to expect every high school student to do that when they have other stuff on their plate.”

“You think that shit means people are accomplished, Parrish,” said Ronan, suddenly. “But hardly any of the asswipes at Aglionby are worth anything.”

“Oof,” Blue said. “Ouch. Though I do think you might be half-right.” 

“You guys must have a pretty high standard for what it takes for someone to be ‘accomplished,’” Adam joked. 

“Again,” said Ronan. “I’m okay with high standards.”

“Well,” said Gansey, “Take Harvard. You think someone deserves to get into Harvard who doesn’t excel in all of their subjects? Literature, the arts, the sciences, math,—”

“Fuck a _4-point-oh_ ,” growled Ronan, and the words sounded like a curse. “What about, like, real life?” 

“Real life?” Adam wasn’t sure he’d heard Ronan correctly. 

“Knowing about how the real world works. _Caring_ about how the real world works. That’s the kind of shit people should have to do to be worthy of Harvard or what-fucking-ever.”

“It’s a wonder you know anyone you consider smart,” said Adam, smirking to himself.

“Really, Parrish?” Ronan returned. His voice was tight with what Adam would have thought was a smirk as well, if it had been anyone else besides Lynch. “You’d be so _unkind_ as to say that no one at Aglionby knows how the real world works?”

Adam snorted. “I’ve never met a teenager with eight extracurriculars who also knows how—” and then Gansey fell, and Adam slipped. 

“Gansey!” Blue yelped. Ronan swore viciously.

“Gansey,” Adam called out, steadying himself. He was on his side, just on the edge of the gap Gansey must have slipped down. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alright,” he replied, though he didn’t sound it. “There’s something strange here—” Adam tried to get his spelunking helmet beam to find Gansey, and caught his hand, pressed up against an engraving in the rock. Gansey pressed down. Nothing budged. 

Gansey said, “I wish this would open.” 

Something began to shift and rumble. “What?”

Blue called down, “Is everything okay?”

“Gansey hit—”

“I seem to have found—I’m going in,” Gansey announced, as the opening in front of them widened. Adam peered in after him as he scrambled into it. 

The opening was tight, but Adam could just make out a huge stone box inside the chamber behind it, illuminated in patches by Gansey’s waving light. Adam’s heart thudded staccato. It was one thing to listen to sit in Monmouth and Gansey ramble on about a buried, sleeping king, and another thing entirely to watch him stand before a coffin.

He knew Blue, Ronan, and Gansey were all asking themselves the same thrilling, impossible question:

 _Glendower_?

Gansey touched the lid. 

“Gansey,” Adam began, half in warning, half in awe. 

Gansey pushed harder at the lid, which gave, screeching halfway open. There was silence. “Owen Glendower?”

A shrill cackle made all of them jump. “ _Have you seen_ ,” sang out a deep voice, climbing up several octaves then ricocheting back down, “ _any pleasant men_?”

Adam could tell Gansey was taken aback simply from the set of his shoulders. “I’m sorry?” he ventured. 

“Oh, _officer_! Married women have little time for writing letters!”

“Adam,” Gansey said slowly. 

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think this is Glendower.” 

“Oh, _officers_!” A hand emerged and shoved the lid the rest of the way off; it hit the ground with a deafening crash. Slowly, a woman sat up. Her arms were bound to her body in an intricate rope pattern, but she was nevertheless wild: tall and alive and, worst of all, grinning ravenously. 

“ _Have you had_ ,” rang her voice again, as her eyes raked them over, “ _any_ _flirting_?”

“Oh, shit,” said Blue.

* * *

Gwenllian was peeved. Adam was learning that this seemed to be her natural state, which terrified and amused him in alternation, but for the most part just made it difficult to carry on a normal conversation in the same room. 

“ _I simply cannot abide_ ,” she sang, whirling around the kitchen, “ _that I have not received the invitation_ ,” she picked up a potato masher and began to bang it against the cast iron skillet in her left hand, “ _to the ball_!”

“Blue!” Maura called out. “Please.”

Blue huffed from the next room. “I’m trying to get ready!”

“ _Blue_. I’m not the one who brought her home.” 

Gwenllian had refused to go home with Gansey, had insulted him and Ronan loudly and continually, and had demanded to be with Blue whenever possible. Blue—who, it should be noted, was no more happy about the situation than Maura—had managed to get her to agree to stay away from Mountain View High and Nino’s, but hadn’t had luck getting her to leave her alone at any other time, which made Gansey and Ronan’s company difficult for everyone. As a result, it had been almost two weeks since they’d hung out with Gansey and Blue outside of school—until tonight, because tonight was the party at Monmouth. 

_Finally_ , Adam thought. They would be free of her. 

“Bluuuuuue,” called Gwenllian. “Lily. The magician and the mirror. Salt and pepper. Oil and vinegar. Oh, magician,” she said, clanking the potato masher and pan together with no discernible rhythm right next to Adam’s bad ear, “will the regiment be there tonight?”

“The regiment?”

“The rowing team,” Adam explained to Maura. “She made me show her—”

“—the _regiment_!—”

“—my yearbook.”

“I see,” Maura said. “Hmm. Well, you know the plan for tonight.”

“I do _so_ want to see the officers!” Gwenllian pulled a fork out of her hair and brandished it at the stand mixer. 

“I know the plan,” said Adam. He wished he could be talking to Maura about virtually anything else. 

Calla, who looked as embattled as he felt, sighed into her whiskey without looking up from her book. “He knows, Maura,” she said. “Talk to Gansey. Get Gansey to yield up info. We’ve been over it every damn time.”

“But you know it’s _important_ ,” Maura said. “Gwenllian is a sign, a sign that something’s happening, an omen, a portent, the first step, in, well—”

Gwenllian, in a very portentous move, tried to shove her fork in an electrical socket. 

Adam and Maura both leapt up to stop her, but Calla simply sipped her whiskey in judgment. “Are you sure about that?” Calla’s psychometry had certainly yielded _something_ jarring when she’d pressed her hand to Gwenllian’s arm, but she still wouldn’t tell anyone what. 

“I’ll make sure Blue talks to Gansey,” Adam said. “But I don’t think you really need to worry about her winning his favor or whatever. He likes her.” 

“I can hear all of this!” Blue shouted through the wall. 

“Oh, Blue Lily!” Gwenllian sang. “Take me to the _ball_! Take me to see the _officers_!”

Persephone entered, ducking to avoid the plum Gwenllian threw at her head. “Are we quite ready? The carriage awaits.” She jingled the minivan keys, and Gwenllian lunged to grab them. 

* * *

Adam wasn’t sure he had really been prepared for the party at Monmouth. 

“You’re a great dancer,” Carruthers yelled tipsily into his good ear. They were in the middle of the horde of people on the first floor of the warehouse, though not by Adam’s own volition: Carruthers had dragged him into the group, and was now unfortunately pushed up against him, terrible at moving with the crowd. Of course Gansey knew enough people to make Monmouth feel packed. “Declan Lynch does esteem skill in the arts.” 

Adam sipped his beer reluctantly as they were jostled from side to side. “Thanks.” He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all. The room was too dark, the crowd too Aglionby, the music too loud and sugary. But if Gansey was throwing a party, of course they had to go. Of course. 

_The things I do for you_ , he imagined starting an argument with Blue. 

“He’s offered me an internship, did I mention?”

“Oh?”

“I’ll be in DC this summer.” Tad waited expectantly for admiration. 

“That’s cool.” 

“And you’ll be?”

Adam shrugged. “Working, probably.”

Tad grabbed his shoulder. “Be my roommate.”

“What?”

“Come to DC with me, and be my roommate. It’ll be awesome. I can totally get you a congressional internship, don’t worry about that, and then you can come to all of the ragers, especially the ones at Rosings Park, and I’m sure they’ll just blow your mind. You know, Declan said it would be good for me to have a roommate—just out of nowhere, I didn’t even bring it up—and you’ll finally get to spend time with him, which will be just splendid. Wow, Parrish, this will be awesome. I can see it now. I’m so glad we’ve made this plan—”

“Tad, I don’t think I can—”

“—a great time, and then that internship will help you with your career, too, which, goodness knows—”

“Tad, I—”

“—oh, don’t be so modest about accepting—”

“Adam!” Blue cried out. He turned and found her, bedecked in an elaborate dress he thought might have been made from the phone room curtains, towing Gansey out of the dark horde of people. “There you are.”

“Oh, Blue, Gansey, how fortunate. Adam and I were just talking about how we’re going to move in together this summer!” 

Gansey and Blue looked between the two of them. 

Adam coughed. “I think I’d better think about it, Tad.” 

“You’re ever so humble, Parrish, but—”

“Tad,” said Gansey genially. “Can I get you anything? Give you a tour of the place?”

“Oh, it is a strange warehouse,” Tad mused, turning with Gansey, who clapped a firm arm over his shoulders and steered him towards the other side of the crowd. “Not that I would ever judge any of your decisions, Richard, but one does wonder…” 

“Okay,” Adam said. “Don’t tell Gansey I said this, but he might be the best person I’ve ever met.” 

“I’m going to tell Gansey,” said Noah, appearing suddenly from the side of the crowd. 

“Noah!” Blue cried out, and hugged him. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“It’s my creepy warehouse too, you know,” he said, with mock offense. “You know, if you ever want to see Gansey again, you should probably go rescue him from his own rescue.”

“He made his own decision,” Blue said, with a practiced air of indifference. 

“He’s too nice to tell Tad to leave him alone,” Noah pointed out. 

“I—oh,” said Blue. “Crap.”

“Blue and Gansey do fit,” said Noah once she’d gone after him. “They get along well.” 

“Do they?” 

Noah shook his head. “You’re way overthinking it, dude.” His eye caught on something past Adam. “Speaking of. Incoming.” 

Ronan Lynch was there before Adam had time to prepare. 

“Ronan!” Noah said with far too much enthusiasm. 

“Lynch.”

“Czerny. Parrish.” Noah got a high-five, and Adam, a nod. Adam had expected to hear drunkenness in Ronan’s voice, but instead he sounded surprisingly cogent. The planes of his face glowed blue and purple in the pulsing light of the party. He had, Adam thought, unfortunately excellent cheekbones. “You’re here,” Lynch added, with mock surprise.

“I was invited.” 

“Shocking.”

Adam burned. “Well, if you don’t consider me appropriate company, I can go.” 

“I meant the opposite.”

It sounded like a threat—but then, it wasn’t, and Adam had no idea what to say. Lynch looked away, brought his wrist up to his mouth to chew at his leather bracelets. 

The party thudded on around them. 

“Neither of you are dancing!” Noah butted in. “Why are neither of you dancing?”

“I just don’t feel like it,” Adam said. “I bet Ronan has a better excuse.”

Lynch arched an eyebrow. “Are you saying I can’t dance?”

“Am I?”

“Ronan can dance,” Noah said knowingly, nodding. “He really can.”

“Oh, really?” Adam said. He was liking Noah more and more. “Do tell.”

“He used to take Irish jig—”

“I wouldn’t wish the ordeal of watching me,” Ronan growled, “on anybody.”

“Sounds like,” Adam said sagely, “you’re just covering for not being any good at it.”

Ronan glared. “Sounds like you’re asking me to prove I can.”

“I absolutely am.”

“What, you wanna fucking dance?”

The question surprised Adam so much that, without knowing what he did, he accepted him. 

Ronan blinked. He looked from Adam to Noah to Adam to Adam’s feet, nodded once, abruptly, and then stalked off into the crowd. 

When Adam turned back, Noah was grinning, his voice singsong. “A dance! You guys are gonna _daaaance_.”

Adam sighed. “Why did I do that? Why do I always put myself in these situations?”

“‘Cause now you get to hang out with Ronan.” Noah looked a little glittery under the lights, but that might have just been his glee. “It’ll probably help relieve some of that unbearable sexual tension.” 

“What?! _Noah_.” He could feel his face flush. “There is _no_ sexual tension.” 

“C’mon, you’ll have fun.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Loosen up a little. Enjoy it.”

“God, no,” Adam laughed. “Why would you even say that? I can’t stand Ronan.”

Noah’s smirk faded into a real smile. “Maybe you’ll like him.” He sounded _earnest_. 

“To like someone I’m putting so much energy into absolutely loathing? Don’t wish that on me.”

To Adam’s immense dismay, Ronan could dance. He still, though, couldn’t be _polite_ , and so still he hadn’t said a word, just returned to them after disappearing across the room, probably to down his drink, and pulled Adam into the throng of Aglionby kids and townies. 

Now they were—well, _dancing_. Adam kept getting distracted from the fact that he was supposed to be dancing by the fact that he was supposed to be dancing _with Ronan Lynch_ . But Ronan had a good sense of rhythm. This was undeniable. Adam wondered if _he_ had good rhythm, if he was moving his hips weirdly, where to put his arms. Ronan wasn’t looking directly at him, so he was probably okay. 

Adam wondered who else could see them. The crowd was big enough for anonymity, but that only went so far; he wondered if Ronan cared, figured that he had a reputation to uphold. He wondered if he should say something, and then decided that it was probably more embarrassing for Ronan if he said nothing, and then decided that it was definitely the _most_ embarrassing to force Ronan to talk. 

“It’s crowded in here,” he had to half-shout, given the mass of people. 

Ronan nodded. 

“Kind of hot, too,” Adam added. 

Ronan nodded again. 

“The Latin homework was terrible this week.”

Ronan shrugged, not looking up. 

“Oh, come on, this is the part where you actually have to talk to me.”

Ronan snorted. “Okay. Here’s some conversation. And another sentence. Does this work for a question?”

Adam couldn’t suppress a smile. “Alright, thanks, that’ll do. Maybe later you can say something about the ventilation systems of Monmouth, or the number of people Gansey considers friends.”

“Do we _have_ to talk?”

“Well, yeah, it’d be a little weird if we didn’t. But I know neither of us like to talk unless we have something so clever to say that it’ll fuel our own narcissism.”

“Maybe me,” Ronan said, finally looking him in the eye. “But don’t insult yourself.”

 _What?_ Adam scrambled for something to say instead of responding to _that_. “Greenmantle mentioned you the other day.” 

Ronan turned red and looked away. Just as Adam had suspected. 

The song began to change, faded out of whiny electropop and into something deeper and more melodic. The bass thudded. The crowd shifted, and they were pushed closer to each other. 

Ronan was so silent that Adam had to say something else. “So is this your only move?”

He was silent still, then moved his arms a bit, but stopped halfway. Adam’s cheeks colored when he realized what he had been about to do. 

To hell with it. Adam wasn’t about to enable Lynch’s cowardice, and he sure as shit wasn’t about to let him be _comfortable_ in his egotism. He took Ronan’s hands and placed them above his hips. 

A dare. Ronan gulped, but didn’t back down, let his hands settle on Adam’s waist. 

That was not what Adam had expected in the slightest. So he wasn’t so much of a coward that he’d refuse to be seen dancing definitively with Adam? So he wasn’t so proud that he wouldn’t touch him?

Ronan still didn’t move, but looked away, as Adam put his hands on his shoulders, close to his neck. His face was so— _fine_ in this light. 

“What were we talking about?” Adam tried to ask, but his voice caught. Had they been this close before? 

“What do you think of music?” Ronan offered. Was it _wise_ to be this close? 

Probably not. “I—” Adam shook his head. The song playing right now was strangely good for EDM, weirdly comforting, like a hot bath, like allowing yourself to drift around in thoughts. “I like this, I guess.” 

Ronan met his eyes. “So do I.” 

“Lynch,” he blurted out, “you said you don’t forgive people. Do you let them hurt you easily?”

Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t.”

“You don’t judge them too early?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you.”

“How’s that going?” Was that a smirk in Ronan’s voice? 

Adam shook his head. He thought about Ronan calling him a hick when they’d first met, and his rudeness the first time Adam had visited Monmouth, and the hurt in Greenmantle’s face as he’d told his story of the Lynch family—and then about Ronan’s hands, steady and comforting on his waist. He watched his face until Ronan reddened further and looked away again. Those cheekbones were frustrating indeed. “I can’t figure it out.” 

“Adam—”

“Oh, _officers_!” a voice screeched from the other side of the room. “The _regiment_!” The crowd quietened in surprise. 

Adam whirled around, caught Blue’s eyes immediately from through the crowd. It _couldn’t_ be. 

Gwenllian spun about wildly. “Anyone for a _flirt_?”

* * *

“What do you mean, he’s transferred?” Blue yelled. Adam was secretly impressed: he didn’t think he’d ever have the guts to _yell_ at Calla.

Calla, with admirable and uncharacteristic patience, made a disapproving noise. “Apparently his parents want him on the campaign trail for his mother’s congressional run, so they moved him to a home-schooling thing in DC. I think. I only talked to his sister on the phone.” 

Blue turned to Adam. “Did you know anything about this?”

“I don’t—”

“He didn’t,” Persephone said. “But the fact of the matter is that young gentlemen are wont to—what was the word— _transfer_ where their caprices take them.”

“ _Congress_ ,” said Blue, “is not a _caprice_.”

Adam had to admit that she had a point. In the two weeks since the ball Gansey had only been at school once, and the news that he had moved to DC overnight, though surprising, didn’t come out of nowhere.

“Oh, come on, you’ve got to be dumped sometime, Blue,” Calla said. “It gives you a little street cred.” 

Blue stomped out of the room. 

“I’m really sorry,” Adam said, as he sat down next to her a few minutes later under the big tree in her backyard. “This sucks.” 

She leaned on his shoulder. “I know.” She sighed. “But it’s fine. It’ll be fine. It’s one stupid boy.”

”Blue—“

“It’s _fine_ —”

“You’re allowed to be attached.” 

Blue turned to look at him. “I know.” Her hair was frizzy around her face. “How do you feel about the fact that Ronan left?”

“Ronan left too?” Adam felt himself flush. Ronan hadn’t been in class, but that was hardly out of the ordinary. “Why would I care?”

“I don’t know,” said Blue, with another sigh, like she did know. 

Adam shook his head. “I’m sad to see Gansey gone, but Ronan—good riddance.” 

She elbowed him. “You’re so dramatic.” 

Adam huffed. “ _He’s_ so dramatic.”

She sighed a third time and put her head back on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be a lonely spring for the both of us.”

Adam slouched so he could rest his head on hers. “No kidding.”


	6. My feelings will not be repressed

Declan Lynch managed to look down his nose at everyone, somehow, even though Adam was probably an inch taller. God, he wished he had Blue there to suffer with. 

“And am I correct in hearing that you know my brother?” 

‘Know’ was not the right word. “We’ve been acquainted.” 

Truth be told, not much had happened after Gansey and Lynch had left town. Adam and Blue were reluctant to admit it, but their lives had been rather more eventful since they’d, well, been acquainted, and there hadn’t been much to do once they’d left. 

There had only been radio silence, despite Blue’s attempts to call and Adam’s attempts to email, which hurt Blue more than she seemed willing to admit, and despite his common sense, stung Adam’s pride. He hadn’t had the sense that Ronan and Gansey both saw the two of them as truly disposable, but apparently he’d been wrong. 

Or maybe Helen had had something to do with it. He wasn’t sure. 

The Aglionby alumni weekend was, impossibly, going to last for almost four days. They were two hours into the cocktail party scheduled for Friday and he was already wiped, and the rest of the weekend promised only more Aglionby: more schmoozing, more drunk middle-aged men who missed being in high school, more old-school politicians there to pick out the next crop. 

Adam missed Blue. 

“I see,” said Declan. “Well, I’m glad to see you here to represent Aglionby.” 

Adam nodded. “My pleasure.” He couldn’t figure out why Tad hadn’t been able to shut up about Declan: he seemed to be just a slightly older Raven Boy, same slick veneer and unapologetic pretension as the rest of them. “I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend. Do you have any plans?”

“Well, as the host,” Declan said seriously, “I look forward to the whole event.”

Adam wasn’t sure what to say. “Right.”

“But I’m particularly excited for the string quartet scheduled for tomorrow night.”

“Oh?”

“The way they handle Schubert,” Declan intoned, “is phenomenal.” 

“Adam?” said a gravelly voice. 

_Ronan_. Adam turned, and saw Ronan Lynch, in a _suit_. What on earth was he doing here?

“Ronan,” Declan said darkly.

“Adam Parrish?” asked the man next to Ronan, who wore a wide grin and voluminous hair. Adam felt like he’d seen him before, but couldn’t recall where exactly. “What a pleasure to finally meet you! Declan, you’ll have to introduce us.” 

“Adam Parrish, Henry Cheng. Henry Cheng,” Declan repeated, gesturing to Adam with what might have been disdain if Adam hadn’t elected to not care about it, “Adam Parrish.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Adam said, as he tried to survive Cheng’s handshake. “You’re here with Ronan?”

“Speaking of,” Declan mumbled. “I’ll see the both of you around.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Adam. 

Declan’s eyes were piercing. “Likewise,” and he moved briskly away. Ronan fled, too, but wordlessly, and in the opposite direction. Of course he couldn’t be bothered to make polite conversation, or even so much as actually greet people. 

“So,” Henry said, with what actually seemed to be a genuinely good-natured smile. “Gansey and Lynch have told me so much about you. But let’s hear it from you.” 

* * *

By lunchtime on Saturday, Adam badly needed a break from people—Henry provided the social stimulus of a lengthy dinner party in every interaction, and Tad seemed to lurk around every corner—and so he took to escaping into the forest behind Rosings Park. 

On the first of these breaks, he found Ronan sitting against a tree, music blaring in his headphones, and said nothing, but flushed with anger at the universe for putting him on a collision course with Ronan Lynch that simply wouldn’t let up. He would have chosen someplace else to go, but the estate was flooded with Aglionby, making the forest essentially the only place to be totally alone. 

When he met him the second time, he couldn’t just let it go again. Of course Ronan would come to this weekend just so he could skip every single event. 

“Lynch,” he said, by way of greeting. 

Ronan had no headphones this time. “Parrish.”

Maybe if he staked his claim, Ronan would know to back the hell off and find someplace else to be delinquent. “I like the forest. This is probably my favorite part of Rosings.” 

Ronan blinked, then nodded. 

Mystifyingly, Ronan was in the forest _again_ after the cocktail hour, as if he hadn’t heard Adam’s clear warning. And back in the forest right at the end of the night, when Adam just wanted to listen to something that wasn’t string quartet. He not only greeted him but asked Adam the weirdest questions, in a polite tone of voice but with a grimace that made it clear the effort pained him: what he made of the trees, what he thought of the weather, if he could see the ravens in the canopy. 

Once, Adam’s footsteps woke him where he sat at the base of a tree. “You caught me sleeping,” he said. Then he’d held out a hand to Adam, proffering a small, glowing light. A firefly. 

Adam stared at it, then opened his hand. The insect flitted from Ronan’s hand—the feeling of those hands around his waist flashed into his mind—and into Adam’s, and didn’t leave until he deposited it on a bank of moss. 

It was like Ronan was a new person—not only that, but a new person who could make small talk, if begrudgingly. Adam couldn’t fathom it. He certainly didn’t like the way it made his stomach turn, the way it reminded him of his last encounter with Lynch, the way it made Ronan look _kind._

His silences started to seem less like disdain and more like— _thought_ , or something. 

On Sunday morning, Adam made his way cautiously into the forest, and for once it had no Ronan. He took his time, leaning against a tree with his eyes closed, thinking about an email from Blue that he had received that morning, in which she had sounded terribly lonely, when he heard someone approaching from not too far off. 

It wasn’t Ronan, but Henry. 

“I didn’t know you liked the forest,” he said. 

“What’s not to like?” Henry said. “Trees, birds, a beak from the oppressive Aglionbying going on in there.”

The comment surprised Adam. Henry was so good at Aglionbying that he hadn’t considered that he would be able to think critically about it. 

“Want to walk?” Henry offered, and Adam joined him. 

“So you’re leaving tomorrow morning?” Adam asked. 

Henry shrugged. “That’s the plan, but it’s up to Ronan, he drove me out here. He might want to ditch tonight.” 

Adam hummed. “He does like to get his way.”

“Don’t we all?” asked Henry. “He’s just more successful at it because he’s rich and well-connected. If you’re not quite so well-connected, you know, you don’t have quite so many options.” 

Adam considered his words, and then decided that saying nothing would be too easy. Plus, he liked Henry. He didn’t seem like an ass. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Henry, but I can’t imagine that you’re exactly short on options or money. Has money ever stopped you from doing what you want, going where you want?”

Henry nodded in admission. Thank goodness. “I suppose not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have responsibilities.” 

Most of Adam wanted to argue, vehemently, but it was true that he didn’t know him that well. And his voice had carried a sort of resignation that Adam was inclined to trust. There was silence as Adam turned his options over again, but he opted for asking, “Do you know Gansey?”

Henry beamed. “Of course I know Gansey.”

“His friendship with Ronan is… unexpected.” 

Their walk had taken them towards a stream, and now Henry stopped to peer into it in the faint light of dusk. “It’s a two-way street. They take care of each other.” 

“Oh?” Adam prompted. 

“Well,” Henry said, “the thing I’m thinking of is really just conjecture, and I have no idea if it was Gansey, so take it with that grain of salt. Again: could’ve been Gansey, might have not been. But Ronan mentioned on the drive over that he recently—well.” 

“Well?”

“I’m telling you this in confidence. But Ronan mentioned on the drive over that he had recently saved a friend—I only think Gansey because, well, Ronan is Ronan, he doesn’t exactly have a huge coterie—that he had recently saved a friend from ditching his whole life and college applications to spend his summer gallivanting around caves with some girl.”

 _Some girl_. The words cut into Adam’s gut. “Huh.”

“Yeah. Apparently she was super cold to him.” Henry tilted him a sympathetic smile. “And her family was unusual.”

Adam didn’t hear a word of the speeches at that day’s luncheon. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Henry had said. Messing up Greenmantle’s life was one thing. But breaking up whatever was going on between _Blue and Gansey_? 

It made him want to throw up. What had he been doing, spending time with Ronan? Adam laughed a little at himself. These Aglionby people, at some level, really were all the same. 

* * *

By the time Sunday ended, Adam never wanted to see Ronan again. To hell with the forest. He made his way down the hall from the room Declan was letting him share with Tad to what Tad had termed the least interesting room in Rosings Park: the library. The windows, for once, were apparently nothing to write home about. 

Adam closed the door firmly behind himself, and then double-checked it. Declan was probably so absorbed in whatever concerto was being played downstairs at the closing soirée that he’d never find him alone in here, so he helped himself to a book at random. Unfortunately, it was about sustainable land management practices in 19th century England. 

He was halfway through a thrilling paragraph about ash trees when the door slammed open. 

Ronan kicked it shut behind himself. He had his suit jacket in his hand and the top few buttons of his probably-Italian shirt were undone, tie loose around his neck like a taunt. He stumbled into the other armchair, flopped down, and was silent. 

They sat in that silence for several minutes. Adam couldn’t say he was glad to see him, but he was hoping that ignoring him would make him go away. He was one night from being out of here.

Ronan began, “Parrish.”

“You should call me Adam,” Adam said, looking back down into his book and away from Ronan’s collarbones. “I’d prefer it.” 

“You weren’t in the forest.” 

Adam shrugged. “Why would I be?”

“I—” Ronan gulped. He had a blurriness about him that Adam recognized too well. 

“Are you drunk?”

“I have to tell you—shit. You’re always reading.” 

He couldn’t figure out where Ronan was going with this. “I guess?” 

Apparently Ronan didn’t know where he was going with it either, because he shook his head vigorously. “Dude. Okay. Fuck,” he said.

“Eloquent. Look, Ronan—”

“—I, uh, shit. You have to let me tell you—fuck.” He smeared his hands up his face and then back down. He looked anguished.

“Out with it, Lynch.”

“Okay, look,” he said. His words slurred together a little bit, and Adam’s stomach turned. “You have to fucking let me tell you—”

“I _am_ —”

“How much I admire you.” 

Adam was sure he had misheard, and then sure that he had invented words where there were none. “ _What_?”

“How much I—fuck—am in love with you.”

The land management book slid from his hands. This could not be happening. There was no way this was happening. 

“You’re so fucking—I don’t even know. You look like a god, Parrish. You’re just too fucking hot. And then you’re so fucking smart." Ronan shook his head. "But like. I know I shouldn’t. Like I really know I shouldn’t. My life is complicated enough. And your life is super complicated. Like, you have to work all those fucking jobs to go to a school you hate. You hate basically all the people in your life, and the people who do love you, you refuse to _let_ them, and then they show up in public to embarrass you and are just, fucking ridiculous, and oh god, if we were together I’d have to deal with those fucking witches all the time.” Ronan scrubbed his hand over his scalp. 

“And you spend all your time wishing you were someone else when you’re always gonna be from Henrietta. And _then_ you’re still in love with Blue, even though Gansey is so far gone over her, but they clearly won’t work out.” Ronan sighed. “And in spite of all of that, can you believe that I’m still in love with you? Maybe Declan _is_ right, I should be with someone—a fucking—I don’t know, a senator’s daughter, or some shit, but I just. That’s how much I fucking like you.” 

Adam was silent. Ronan finally looked at him. “Well?”

Adam still said nothing. His head was reeling. 

“Adam? Are—?”

“I never wanted you to like me.” The physical impact of his words on Ronan’s body was immediate: the tightening, the curl inward, the way Ronan Lynch was suddenly made small. Ronan thought he could make him feel lesser, but he did not know what he had coming. “You don’t seem to actually _want_ to like me, anyway, so that works out.” 

Ronan seemed to actually be shocked that this wasn’t going well. “What? Why are you so upset—”

“I can’t believe you think you can say shit like that to me, and say shit like that about Blue, and ruin her _life_ , and still have the nerve,” and that was part of it, too, right, that Ronan always seemed to have the nerve to do what he wanted, that was part of what made him terrible, that was part of what made it impossible for Adam to stop thinking about him, impossible for Adam to stop thinking about the way he danced and his ridiculous car and his terrible taste in music, “to think that you can tell me that against your will, against all reason, and against your own—I don’t know— _character_ —you still like me, and then think I might want to _be with_ —”

“What, you want me to be happy that you’re poor? You want me to be happy that you’re a mess?” Ronan had gotten his second wind for fighting, and cocked his head to the side. “Your pride just can’t take the fact that you have flaws, apparently.”

Adam didn’t even know how to respond to that. “It’s not that you’re a guy. Don’t take it that way, because it’s not that, and it’s not even what you just said, it’s that you are just such an _asshole_ , Ronan. You show up in my life, with your stupid cheekbones and your car and your money, and you think you can say that shit to me? You think you can screw over good people like Blue and Greenmantle and walk through the world without consequences?”

Ronan gaped at him. “ _Greenmantle_? What—”

“And okay, I guess you can give Gansey whatever terrible advice you want, but when it makes people like Blue this unhappy, and this lonely? She’s half in love with him, and—”

“No one—he was gonna just, like, throw over his whole—thank God I broke them up. I saved that man from himself—”

“And then you come to me like I’m supposed to see you as some kind of gift?”

Ronan was silent. Adam couldn’t read his face, and didn’t want to have to look at it anymore, so he stood up and walked across the room, put the book on the desk. He wished he were virtually anywhere else. He turned around. 

“Ever since I met you, you’ve been arrogant and rude and self-centered. You are the last person I want to be with right now.” 

Ronan’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Adam realized, suddenly, catching his breath, how angry he actually was. He felt overwhelmed by it: felt like putting a fist into a wall, felt like throwing the book at Ronan, felt like crying. 

“Adam,” Ronan said finally.

“Out.” 

Ronan looked away, stood, and slunk out. Adam sat back down and tried not to cry. 

* * *

Adam was just getting back from a double shift at the factory the next Sunday when he nearly fell down the stairs in surprise. Ronan was sitting against the door to his apartment, eyes closed. 

“Lynch?”

Ronan opened his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t been asleep. 

“How long have you been there?”

“Since mass,” Ronan said, like it should have been obvious.

“It’s 5 PM. Wait, you go to St. Agn—how did you know I lived here?”

Ronan said nothing, but stood, and held out a folded up sheaf of paper. 

Adam, despite himself, took it. 

“Please read it,” Ronan said, and hurried off down the stairs. 

“How did you know?” Adam shouted after him, but he didn’t turn around. 

Adam made himself go inside and lock the door and set down his groceries and check the lock again before he sat down on the bed and unfolded the paper. It was in arial and pretty rumpled, like Ronan had been holding it for hours. 

> hey. 
> 
> i'm not writing to repeat any of the shit i said last weekend. i’ll save us both the trouble. also i'm not sure i can rly say sorry for saying any of it because i only remember like half of what i said (i had a lot of scotch) but i am sorry i said it the way i did. i’m not great with words. but i’m sure youve figured that out by now.
> 
> if it makes any difference it was the anniversary of a pretty shitty day in my life and declan and i aren't on great terms, and being at his ridiculous summer house, surrounded by aglionby fucks, was hard. i'm not a big aglionby or declan fan. but im sure youve figured that out too.
> 
> you mentioned greenmantle and you mentioned blue. you dont have to like me, and you definitely dont have to like me like that, obviously, but you should know the truth. 
> 
> this is really strange to put in an email but i’m sure those witches you hang around do stuff thats at least as impossible. and also you were there when gansey found gwenllian so. hopefully you dont lose your shit. my dad could take things out of his dreams. he would make stuff to sell to collectors. i don’t know the details rly. he got into business with greenmantle four or five years ago. 
> 
> you might have noticed that greenmantle likes to collect things. he’ll collect you if you’re not careful. 
> 
> i dont really know how to write this but last year, my dad was in the middle of a high stakes deal w greenmantle that wasnt going well, when one morning i came outside into our driveway and found his body. someone hired a hit man. my mom went into a coma and my brothers and i got kicked out of our home (long story but i only started being able to go back rly recently) and basically everything went to hell. i don’t know if greenmantle hired the guy who killed my dad but i do know that greenmantle tried to blackmail my brothers and I into selling him the rest of my dad’s stuff. declan and i cut him off bc he was so aggressive about it. also, blackmail, and maybe killed my dad. so. 
> 
> the worst thing that i can prove he did was kidnap my baby brother matthew last year. i won’t go into it here but there’s something special abt matthew and greenmantle was gonna use him for— idek. i dont rly wanna think about it. keep him as a collector’s item or something fucked like that. he forced us to pay him ransom to get him back. it was not good. 
> 
> you can ask henry if you dont believe me abt any of this. he’s tangled up in the same black market mess and he’s seen most of the shit greenmantle’s done to my family.
> 
> also abt blue. i didn’t rly realize she liked gansey that much. he was super into her but it seemed like he mostly annoyed her. he deserves better than someone who's mad at him all the time. i talked to helen about it and she agreed. also the psychics kinda freak me out but thats probably just a me thing.
> 
> so yeah. you dont have to ever talk to me again. i’m not going back to aglionby so i don't know if i'll even ever see you again. and i don’t think you’ll ever think i’m actually worth your time. and you’re probably right. but i’m sorry about that night.
> 
> r


End file.
